We had a different experience on this year’s Wesak Day.  We were also on the road and among crowds of people.  We were excited and thrilled about the parade.  We were waiting patiently.  And for the first time, we were not the participants of the parade this year but the spectators!

Suddenly, the policemen arrived in their big motorbikes.  They were dressed neatly in their uniforms and they parked their motorbikes aside, walked down, took their positions on the road and controlled the traffic.  The crowd suddenly appeared from every direction.

After that, we saw the participants of the parade in their teams and the decorated vehicles moving towards us.  The Sarawak Buddhist Society’s team led the parade followed by the team from different secondary schools in Kuching.  Next, the decorated vehicles appeared with its team following closely behind.  They are usually Buddhist temples and organisations in Kuching.  The decorated vehicle shown in the picture above shows the statue of Prince Siddhartha (Gautama Buddha) when he was born.  This one was colourful and attractive.  The butterflies were controlled by a mechanism and they were flapping their wings as the vehicle moved along the road.

The participants really put in a lot of effort in decorating the vehicles.  The colour yellow is often used because it represent light.  We need lights to see things in the dark.

Buddha has shown us the light in our life.  Enlightenment and awakening help us to see things clearer and to understand and control our emotions in a more effective way.

The side of this vehicle was decorated with golden cloth designed in a beautiful pattern.  There were also man made lotuses and lotus flowers.  Someone was controlling the music “behind the scene”.  Everyone put their hands together to give the highest respect to Buddha.

There was a stupa on this decorated vehicle.  Surrounding the stupa were the statues of Buddha.

Another view of this decorated vehicle.

There were reverends sitting on this decorated vehicle next to the stupa.  This reverend was sprinkling blessed water to the crowds with hope that everyone will have a blessed and peaceful life.

They were also reading mantra. Play this video to listen to it.

This vehicle used a towing car to move forward.  Unlike the others, they had drivers on board to make it move.

To be continued…

We found many jellyfish while we were on the Como Jetty.

This jellyfish has a transparent head.

Most of the jellyfish are dotted.

This jellyfish is transparent.

Let’s see how it moved.

This is a fat jellyfish but has short tentacles.

They look cute especially when they are moving.  But they sting and may cause death.

While SiewPeng and I were looking at this set of photos and video clips, we made a joke that why not human swim in “Jellyfish style”.

This jellyfish has longer tentacles.  I guess jellyfish uses its tentacles to control its direction while swimming besides using it to sting human and other animals in the sea.

And look carefully, what can you find on the jellyfish’s head?

We found that some jellyfish has cross “+” on its umbrella-shaped head.  Are they related to Jesus?

I think this is the first time I see live jellyfish swimming in the water.  Let’s check out its facts:-

[Jellyfish are found in every ocean, from the surface to the deep sea. Some hydrozoan jellyfish, or hydromedusae, are also found in fresh water; freshwater species are less than an inch (25 mm) in diameter, are colorless and do not sting. …

Jellyfish blooms cause severe problems for mankind. The most obvious are human stings (sometimes deadly) and tourism declines on coasts. …

However, the most severe effects are those to fish; severe or complete declines in commercial fish stocks, destroying fish nets, poisoning or crushing captured fish, consuming fish eggs and young fish. …

Clogging also causes many problems including stoppage of nuclear power plants and desalination plants, as well clogging engines of ships and even overturning of boats by one of the largest species, the Nomura’s jellyfish.] - from wikipedia.

This is the poor jellyfish that has overturned.  It did not move itself but was moved by the tiny waves onto the border between the land and water.  Watch the clips bellow and you will understand.

We also found fish in the river.

The bigger fish swam alone.
The smaller fish swam in a group.

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The dead fish (most probably left by those who went for fishing) was burned and dried under the hot sun in the hot summer.

The sea gull might be targeting on the jellyfish.  But it flew away after I walked nearer to it.

Shells.  We did not picked up any of them because they were smelly with a dead jellyfish next to them.  It was also hard to find a shell in perfect and special shape.

Sea moss has grown itself on the rock.

I did not see the black swan (which is famous in Perth) here, I saw it somewhere else.  I’ll show you in the coming posts.

A pelican was self-cleaning using its bill.

Another pelican was flapping its wings.

A Scarlet Ibis was eating something inside the drain.

A Cattle Egret was eating fish.

A Southern Ground-Hornbill was eating fish.

The lonely yellow-bill stork was having his meal.

This stork rubbed its back with its long neck.

Storks fighting for their food (fish).

Stork did a landing on water.

Duck lined up, and marched, “Left … Left … Left Right Left.”

A lonely Orang Utan (a type of ape).  In Malay language “orang” means human, “utan” or “hutan” means jungle.  Yes, it is the human of the jungle.  It looks similar to human especially when they show their expressions like human being.

Right after we have visited the Kubah National Park, we made use of our ticket to enter this wildlife center without any extra charges, we still had the time, and we took a 15 minutes distance by car to reach here.

According to the map, we were actually taking a big round, but the direct path would be through the jungle which take hours climbing up and down.  Which one would you take?

Orang Utan is the main attaction here.

Please take time to watch the video that I have taken on Orang Utan.

If it is a human hand, the caption would be, “Help… help…!”

Another type of ape.

Deers.  (I guess)

Some of them have antler on their heads.  May be that’s an easier way to differentiate which one is the male and female.

We were given a map before we entered the wildlife center and were told that some places we should not go because some fo the apes were released to the nature and they might attack human.

I wondered if the ticket seller at the entrance who gave me the map have ever walked into the park.  She used a pen to draw this and that onto the map but finally ended up that we reached an area where it was not on the map and we could not find some sections that were labelled on the map.  We almost missed Orang Utan.  We had to walk on the road inside the park, and there was no proper signboard to tell us where to go, and the map seemed to have something wrong.

Finally, We forgot about map and put it aside, and we explored by ourselves.  Our conclusion about this park is:-  ”It is big but SMALL“.  Why?  It is big because we had to walk for quite a distance to see the wildlife (wasting time ), but the number of animals is small.  We were disappointed because there were not many animals there.  Another main reason, we were exhausted and tired to continue walking (after we have spent the whole day in Kubah Nationaal Park), we were just there for about 30 minutes and left.

It was just like a big house with no furniture, or a beautifully designed website with no content.

I hope the condition of this wildlife center can be improved especially on the signboard to show the direction, do not let any part of it to be closed down.

I like this pose.  Animal can kneel down to show respect too.

Another good example is a baby goat usually kneel down to drink milk from its mother to show respect.  It is grateful whereas not all human beings are like that.

If is quite challenging while taking photos of animal behind the fences.  First, the auto focus may not work properly, because most of the time it will focus on the fence instead of the animal.  Second, it becomes worst when the animals keep on moving which add the difficulty to manual focus.

Some of the pictures here are taken under manual focus mode, I should have shown you the pictures of hornbill ( a type of big bird that can be found in Borneo island), but all of them are blur because it was quite difficult for me to focus under low light condition and the hornbills were moving.

Leopard Cat.  Read the following for details:-

Some of the wildlifes were labelled properly with detail description, but not all.

If I am not mistaken, I have seen one of the description about the Orang Utan that says, “its hands are 10 times more powerful than human.”

Do and Don’t in the park.

We saw this signboard not far from the entrance and we are interested in some of the Waterfall.  They are all jungle trails which take hours.  We will try these trails next time.

Besides the cultural dances from Sabah, Sarawak and Peninsular Malaysia, there were also youngsters in white, blue, red and yellow performing on the stage as a welcome to the VIPs and as the “background” for the singers :p.  They were also busy in between the programmes of the night where they appeared after a programme ended and before the next programme started.  They were also lined up to welcome the VIPs going up the stage for delivering their speeches.

Can I call them cheerleaders?  They looked similar to cheerleaders.

Watch the video above, they have different types of actions.

Remember I told you that we have a long wait before the VIP arrived?  This group of active youngsters were also waiting on the stages.   Before the ceremony started, they were bored.  Some of them took out their mobile phone and started texting, some of them were talking to their friends and laughing, some kept on looking here and there.

They were waiting, and we were waiting too.  Was this girl looking at my camera? Smile!

Waiting.

Still waiting.

They stood up and got ready, the VIP was coming.

They started performing.

They had different types of actions.

I noticed that they were divided into groups, some of them always had to look at the person in front and follow the action.  Sometimes they were slower by half a second before they can follow the action of the person in front.  May be they had limited time for the rehearsal, however they still performed well.

Males on the left sides of the stages.  I guess the man in the red shirt was their leader.  The rest of them always turned their heads and followed his actions.

The flag team was ready to go up the stage.

Our Malaysia flag’s colours:- yellow, white, red, blue.

Sometimes, they went up the stages while the singers were singing.  And they became the background for the singers.

They may not be 100% perfect, but I could see that they had put in a lot of effort, especially as a large group of people.  It was not easy to synchronize everybody’s steps and actions, unless they have trained for at least months.  Good teamwork!